German MVNO Drillisch has closed the acquisition of no-frills mobile brand Yourfone and its subscriber base from Telefonica Deutschland.
In November, the two parties signed a non-binding letter of intent allowing Drillisch – which operates on…
German MVNO Drillisch has closed the acquisition of no-frills mobile brand Yourfone and its subscriber base from Telefonica Deutschland.
In November, the two parties signed a non-binding letter of intent allowing Drillisch – which operates on Telefonica’s network – to buy Yourfone in January for a price in the range of €50m to €100m.
The companies have not disclosed the exact figure they arrived at.
Yourfone was one of a stable of brands held by German mobile carrier E-Plus, which was swallowed up by Telefonica in October for €8.6bn after a long regulatory review.
Telefonica agreed to substantial remedies to get the deal, which took the number of German network operators down from four to three, over the line.
However, the Yourfone sale is separate to the concessions Telefonica pledged to the European Commission (EC).
Last summer, Telefonica agreed to give Drillisch access to 20% of its mobile network capacity over a five-year period and the option to acquire rights to use a further 10% of its capacity, in order to secure the EC’s blessing for the deal.
Telefonica has also agreed to sell a number of its stores to Drillisch, which has outlined plans to add three and a half million LTE customers between 2015 and 2019. Drillisch currently has two million subscribers, according to data from Berenberg.
Yourfone has roughly 235,000 customers, which are predominantly post-paid. It constitutes a small fraction of Telefonica and E-Plus’s combined customer footprint of 41 million.
Telefonica has said it does not plan to sell any more customers as it looks to continue with the multi-brand strategy which both it and E-Plus have been pursuing to address different customer segments.
